The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to paging for millimeter wave (mmW) shared radio frequency spectrum band.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, (e.g., a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, or a New Radio (NR) system). A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations or access network nodes, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may be otherwise known as user equipment (UE).
When a base station has information to transmit to a UE in a power saving mode (e.g., idle mode), the base station may transmit a paging message to prompt the UE to enter a connected state to receive the information. Paging messages are typically broadcast on a channel that is received by a group of multiple UEs. In some cases, mmW transmissions may be directional transmissions to improve coverage. Due to the directionality of these mmW transmissions, wireless communications systems operating in a mmW spectrum may use beam sweeping to transmit broadcast messages in multiple directions. Because beam sweeping involves redundant transmissions in different directions, fewer time resources are available for each broadcast transmission. Given these time limitations, a single mmW broadcast may provide enough time to send a full set of paging information to a UE.